


Brute Brute Heart of a Brute Like You

by gul



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Books, Daddy Issues, F/M, Masturbation, slightly inappropriate mentor relationships, will is a bit of a mess here but isn't he always
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-23
Updated: 2014-09-03
Packaged: 2018-01-02 10:18:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1055611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gul/pseuds/gul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr prompt: Hannibal and Abigail interact in the psychiatric facility; he brings her food and books.</p><p>Each chapter will be mildly structured around a piece of poetry because heaven knows I love my structure in stories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "The Tornado"

The daytime was fine, cool and quiet and she could be alone—the wide windows letting in the diffused white sunlight, the plentiful greenery throwing fanned shadows on the hardwood floors.  The every night in all the black Abigail Hobbs would gasp awake in her prim little bed, the cold knife like the cold night.

The most lasting gift her father had given healing too slowly; she would sometimes wake from the sheer pain. 

It all made the first few weeks in the institution were almost intolerable:  the cold sharp shock of all the nightmares along with the jittering fear of discovery as she had to play good little girl for (almost) all of her visitors and interrogators.

( _The television set went black; black as the sky black as death black as the hell outside)_

At least they brought her gifts.

Alana Bloom, for whom she was a young and helpless victim, gave her books 

Dr. Bloom would come clipping up the steps to Abigail’s room, bearing crisp new books with the receipts tucked inside the front covers.  

Alana explained, putting them on Abigail's desk, that they were books she had loved as a teenager.  The young woman had feared sentimental garbage but she should have known better—the novels and anthologies (O’Connor; Nabokov; Borges; more) were complicated cutting little things with words and phrases she could lose herself in, and she enjoyed them as her own cut stung and healed.

And then they would talk.  Alana always very very concerned about her well-being, which churned something deep in Abigail.

She remembered sitting across from her mother at dinner, after she had gone “hunting” with her father, and hating and loving her so much she almost couldn’t breathe, as her mother asked her pleasant surface questions—and never knew and never tried to save or help her.

How could Alana, so clever, so wise, so lovely—how could she not know? 

Once Alana arrived to take her out to dinner.  She wore a printed dress and red coat and balanced on tall heels, and looked so sophisticated. 

Abigail was young and sometimes words and desires would tumble out of her mouth before she had a chance to examine them.

“Would you help me put up my hair?” she asked Alana, and was rewarded with the tight bright smile always given when Alnna felt someone was manipulating her.  (Abigail had seen it thrown at Hannibal before, but never Will.)  Usually Alana was always very careful to treat her as a fellow adult, with a friendly distance.  “My…uh.  My mom always did.  Sorry.  Never mind.”

“Of _course_ I will,” Alana said quickly, her smile tugging with sadness and her clear blue eyes going a little dark.  

And she sat while Alana took the brush to her head, and Alana's smooth cool hands on Abigail’s neck and through her hair were very much like her mother’s, and Abigail found herself leaning into her touch until she had to close her eyes before she choked.

Alana’s best gift to her was a legitimacy to her victim narrative that deflected attention; this she accepted gladly.

Will Graham, for whom she was a complicated sort of surrogate daughter, would never succeed in giving her the badly-wrapped gifts he always carried in his bag.

Graham would meet her in the common room and would never notice the other girls stealing intrigued glances at him.  Handsome Will, who would sit before her and ask her everything so urgently, with all his messy love pouring out.  It would catch in his mouth like the fishing lures he would never ever work up the courage to give her.  It would snag his words.

When he would try to show affection; when he would grab her hands or squeeze her shoulder and even one ill-fated time try to kiss her forehead, it would be too abrupt and always a little too intimate.  These gestures came from affection too long unreleased and unexamined.

All Abigail knew was that it was probably best for Will to want to protect her.  She was wrong, of course 

( _Clutching each other our hearts pounding)_

He was very handsome, though, she’d think idly, Will who knew nothing of young women and what they might like or need.  So he visited and kept visiting, with his handsome face and form and hidden presents in his professor’s bag. 

Sometimes, idly, she thought of what it might be like to kiss him, to feel those nervous lips under hers and the scruff of his face under her hands—and then she felt a guilty shock.  

( _Loud as the pounding of the wind on the windows)_

Once she had reached playfully for his leather bag, smiling like a little girl.  “What’s in your bag,” she asked, “who’s that present for; I like the ribbon.”

He had blushed and jerked the bag back, his desperate little smile of pain jerking across his sweet face.

“Is it for a girl,” she asked—drawled, suggestively.

“Yes,” he said, “I mean, no, not like that,” but changed the subject, and since he was hastily stuffing the gift further into the bag he did not see how Abigail’s face fell.

Because sometimes she felt so frightened and so alone, and that she couldn’t breathe like she might be drowning.  And maybe, she thought, she could clutch onto Will and he could help save her—this was when she believed she could be saved—he was, after all, so sweet.  So lovely and so troubled.

( _Gasping for breath)_

But sometimes his pain bled out so that it overwhelmed Abigail too.  She had loved her old father in spite of everything but he haunted both of them; she saw that if she clung to Will the both of them would drown.

( _Holding our breath)_

When he would leave, he would sort of stand and announce his departure and then wait, and mostly Abigail would be cruel and only smile and thank him for visiting.

But once she rose and moved to embrace him, and she pressed herself close and gently nuzzled his chest—oh, it was lovely, she though—and he responded in spite of himself, his arms draped gently around her shoulders but his hips pressed to hers, before he disengaged and stuttered a goodbye, not meeting her eyes.

After that he would leave her quickly, but he visited more. 

Will did not give her anything but his heart, which he chose to give to only to a few.

She saw him around Hannibal, how Will deferred to him and stayed close.  She saw how Hannibal fed on him. She saw how Will always chose not only his gifts but their recipients so poorly.

( _Like the wind outside roaring and pausing)_

Hannibal Lecter, for whom she was anyone’s guess, gave her poetry.

They had shared a dark sort of understanding from the beginning, she and this sleek monstrous man with his fine bones and overfed lips and lovely suits and commanding presence; the amused and knowing flare in his reddish eyes when she lied to him or others.

He was on her intake sheet as guardian.  They did not share blood but the strange dark spaces she shared with Hannibal echoed the ones she shared with her father.  Standing over bodies.  The smell of blood. Sharing secrets like dark rooms; trying to parse the nature of the deep inscrutable affections they both showed her.

Like her father, she mostly wanted his approval and influence and protection; for them to reflect on one another.  Unlike her father, she realized she wanted other things too.

( _Then the great chunking of the short thunder imprisoned in the small black animal of cloud)_

He would meet her alone in her room, bringing her an occasional finely-wrapped meal and slim volume of poetry.  He would sit beside her bed and they would speak. 

“I hate poetry,” she blurted, when he handed her the book, small and bound in blue.  She was frightened of him, and therefore tended to be confrontational; she did have the decency to blush. 

Hannibal smiled, one of his curled half-sneers, and tilted his head.  “You have then been the victim of a poor education,” he said, and she knew he chose the loaded word victim on purpose.

“Sorry,” she said.  “Thank you, I mean.  What are these about, anyway, who are they by?”

“Some contemporary poets, who will provide both a simple introduction to the medium and who deal with relevant subjects to you—storms, and pain.  Of overcoming events so terrible they seem like monstrous entities themselves.  You will take to some of these, I think.”  

He reached out a hand to hers, helping her open the book to a particular page. The shock of his touch, so precise and calculating even in the way it lingered, was profoundly distracting. “Read it.  Read some of them aloud; poetry can serve as a sort of incantation.  On my next visit, tell me which ones you prefer, and why.”

He says it politely, like he is interested in her well-being.  It is also a command.  A part of her shivers.

( _We sat holding each other still a long time yet in the black closet)_

She still stares off into space sometimes, even when he is there beside her (it is better though when he is there) when she is pulled by the whirling tumult of her own thoughts, like a storm.  The knife on her neck and her mother bleeding, her father hissing how he loved her even as he killed her.

Of what she had become and maybe always was.

The hospital made her agitated; she felt stuck.  Other people making decisions for her, about who she was and what she needed.  Once, when she grew agitated describing her frustration he cocked his head and reached out for the back of her neck, and gently rubbed the tension out of her shoulders and back while murmuring soothing things—and she melted under his touch, and inside swelled a sort of love and fear that was familiar to her.

Nothing like a father, though.  Nothing like her father, except for all the black inside him.

But he got neatly inside all the other spaces of her head.

She wondered if that’s why he brought the books, so he could have some control of what went on in her head even more than with his deep smoky voice and precise touches. 

( _Slow to come back from the black)_

Alana’s books she reads by day but Hannibal’s she read by night, in her slim prim bed with the cold black pushing up against the windows.

She read them in a quiet whisper in her lonely attic room, tasting the rhythm and formation of each word and phrase.

She thought of Hannibal thinking of her—only her.  Of giving her words to mouth and tongue as she  gave him her obedience, and of his dark red eyes and strong deliberate hands and his _authority_ she longed to test.  

Her hand cupped her breast before roaming over her belly and between her legs—langourously at first, until the first little thrums of pleasure started building.  Soon she was reciting all the bits of the book that had stuck in her head, as she manipulated herself, bucking against her hands.

“From the death,” she said, “from the death,” and when she finally finished the phrase she came with a shudder and quiet gasp. 

She does not know if Hannibal will know, when she sees him next.  She does not know exactly what she might like him to give her next, and what he might like her to give in return. 

She does know, though, that she has not been delivered by circumstance into kinder arms, from any death not her father’s design.

( _From the death in the teeth of the tornado)_

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. "Daddy"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter based on "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath.

(You do not do)

Abigail curses at the horrible rasping; she had misjudged the weight of her room’s mirror when moving it and it had scarred black streaks on the wooden floor. She’d have to clean them later. The doctors wouldn’t notice but every goddamn hypersensitive wannabe guardian of a visitor she had would and would want to discuss it. At least today it was just Freddie, who probably wouldn’t confront her about her pathological redecorating to her face. Probably she’d just bury it in her book somewhere.

(You do not do)

Her room at the facility was pleasant enough—they made up for the inherent sterility of such a place with houseplants and antique furniture, with peeling honey varnish and fragile legs. Meant her room’s mirror was a full-length monstrosity by her desk. If anyone asked why she pushed it to the wall, she planned to tell them that catching her reflection at night startled her one too many times. Not a lie.

She’d have to be more careful. Not the first time she’s reminded herself that. Abigail hoists the mirror back to its rightful place between the desk and the window, and catches the way her face twisted in effort, her pale freckled skin—

Abigail took after her father. She hated that she took after her father, with her large blue eyes like ice water, her dark hair, round face and round red mouth. The scar was a hand always around her neck; he would never stop holding her.

(Any more, black shoe  
In which I have lived like a foot)

Sometimes, especially in mornings, Abigail would search her face for traces of her mother and only see her sometimes in the weight of sadness and worry pulling at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Sometimes, in evenings, she would search for traces of herself and not be sure what to look for.

(Poor and white,  
Barely daring to breathe or achoo)

Freddie was the only visitor she had who always made an appointment, for which Abigail was grateful. It gave her time to prepare, to pull out the chair from her desk and make her bed. And decide how to dress, depending on the visitor.

Her options were limited. All her clothes had been chosen by Alana Bloom, like Abigail’s mother had chosen her clothes when she was a child—simple modest things in rich colour and earth tones, soft warm fabrics with high necks and long sleeves. Alana had been the most sensitive to Abigail’s discomfort with the new stranglehold of attention. The doctor had responded by showing affection by supplementing her environment, instead of constant company. Warm clothes, rich music, books like cenote pools. All things to swaddle her with instead of that tight paternal embrace.

Abigail yearns for Alana. But she knows, like Lecter and Graham, that she cannot afford her.

After her father, Abigail has also had to experiment with scars. At first she put her hair up, but it was like her father had written his sickness on her very skin and she saw it reflected in others’ eyes. Makeup ruined her clothes and felt unfair. She settled on scarves and on her long hair worn loose.

(Daddy, I have had to kill you.)

But for Freddie, no scarf. She needed to appear the victim. And childish sweaters with too long of sleeves.

A soft rap at the door—Freddie was always on time. The journalist also had the cleverness to make appointments in the low times, the down times the one and two PMs when the light outside was a sickly yellow languor and the air seemed heavy.

“Come in,” Abigail says, smoothing her hair down.

Freddie enters, slim and small, with her bright self-composure and loud clothes. Her presence a hum of acid colour in the dull sickroom. “Hello, Abigail,” she smiles. Her gloved hand held her purse and some gift-bags. They rustled festively as she took her seat, setting them to the side. “Thank you for seeing me,” she says, as if their meetings were due to Abigail’s generosity rather than a mutually recognised, mutually beneficial arrangement.

“Are you kidding?” Abigail grins. “You get me out of group therapy every time.”

Freddie opens her mouth in mock-chagrin. “Oh, again? How unhelpful of me.”

Abigail had always been vocal about her hatred of group, of sitting in prim circle with other young women discussing the reasons for their imprisonment. Hers—the remaindered flesh of the narrative her father’s love. A love like a cage of antlers.

(You died before I had time—)

And anyway. She didn’t know how to help girls like her.

She only knew how to hunt them.

The thought throttles her. Abigail only lasts fifteen minutes, barely past pleasantries, before she shudders and stands. The yellow afternoon light casts her skin wan and the plastic smell downstairs from the remains of lunch is turning her stomach. She wraps her arms around herself. “I’m sorry. I—I don’t think I can, today,” she says. “I am so very tired of talking about all this.” All those years of slow strangulation; his hands may be dead but they were still holding her by the neck.

(Marble-heavy,)

Freddie cocks her head. She had large bright eyes and a mockingbird mouth. “You’re right,” she says, trying and failing to mask her tenderness with a curt bright tone. “We could use some air—does that window open?” She nods to the wide window, behind the mirror.

Abigail pauses. “No. I mean, not that I know.”

Freddie smiles slightly too long, maintaining eye contact, and Abigail could have kicked herself. “That’s all right. Let’s stop for the day. You probably haven’t had too many breaks today, have you, Abigail?”

“Are you kidding?” She walks towards the window. There didn’t even seem to be wind outside. “All I got is time.”

“To think. Time that’s filled up going over and over what’s past, as you hang in strange limbo. But, Abigail, have you considered what we’re doing, you and me, by writing this book?”

“Sure.” She turns to lean against the desk. It cuts into the tops of her thighs through her jeans, and the almost-pain grounds her. “You publish your book, we make a lot of money. I change my name and move to Europe and get some really solid plastic surgery. You come visit and we party in Tuscany or wherever.”

“Here,” Freddie says reaching into her black snakeskin purse to pull out a notebook. She places it on the desk. “This is for you; a journal. Writing always helped me, when I was your age.”

Abigail looks at it, and sneers before she can stop herself. “I’m not gonna write down a bunch of secrets for you to use in your book, if that’s what you were hoping.”

Freddie’s face doesn’t even flicker; targeted rudeness never hits her. “No, of course not. In fact, I would prefer you not write about your father at all. This is just for you. What about you, Abigail? What will your life be?”

Abigail picks it up, studying it closely to cover embarrassment at her outburst. The leather smell was sharp; the red of it almost glowing against her pale hands. The cream pages were like velvet. “Ruined. Like me.”

“A woman like you? Never.” Freddie sits back. “We’re far too clever and strong for that, Abigail. To write the story is to have the power. Take your power back.”

“Have you been talking to—” Abigail stops. Freddie was pretty good at hiding piqued interest, but not perfect. A magpie of a woman, caught up by anything sharp and shining. “Never mind. What’s in the bags?”

“I brought you a few things, actually, but you can open those later. All things to help you own yourself.”

“Thank you,” Abigail says. 

When Freddie would leave, she would grasp Abigail’s shoulder gently with her slim cool fingers in soft suede gloves. Like a sister. Like someone who, if she saw, chose not to say anything. Even if they were using each other, this was a love Abigail understands and this time she felt and quelled the mad urge to embrace Freddie before the door softly clicked shut behind her.

She has had to navigate sharks so long she has no idea what open water is or how terrible it can be.

That night in bed Abigail balances the journal open on her knees, the cream pages silky under her fingers and terrifying in their emptiness. She tries to write, with her new black artist’s pens. Nothing comes. Nothing comes but outlining knives in perfect black ink slashes like wounds. Knife after knife, and hands, and girls who looked like her and might have been her, and their lives. 

Her father, her Dad, he had wanted her life and hadn’t she given it to him; wasn’t she still giving it to him? And it was never enough never enough—the pen tore the paper—it would never be enough.

(A bag full of God)

And what were fathers to their daughters? What were daughters to their fathers? And would she ever stop feeling his arms around her his chest at her back his hands at her neck? Finally spilling that same sick blood that ran between the both of them.

She didn’t want to be anyone’s daughter.

Of course, the window in her room opened. Wide and paned and reflective in the dark; the slight condensation makes her hands slippery as she jerks it open. Cold air blasts her and she wraps her always-unwieldy scarf tighter. She slips out, barely daring to breathe, stepping quickly and quietly to the only wall she has to climb in between her and her destination.

Abigail is not ever certain why she goes anywhere but that night she goes to Hannibal’s office. It pulled at her, something agitating in her that only was soothed by the thought of the touch of cool brick. It is late and cold and the streetlights are streaks of yellow sulphur as she made her way down to the pale brick building. 

(Ghastly statue with one grey toe)

Behind the office the lawn gives way to a small gravel lot, but against the building is soft grass. She sits and leans back, running her hands along the dark night-damp grass, pulling at it, the blades giving way in little clicks like tiny snapping jaws. As she lay against the rough unyielding wall her mind wanders and she imagines being held by him, and even through the flush of guilt her heart slows.

(Big as a Frisco seal)

The next thing she knew it was morning and she was cold and shivering and damp as the breeze in the grass, as the pale sunlight.

***

Like usual, no one tells her anything. 

The walk back is terrible and long—the sun too bright on her greasy-feeling face. She doesn’t get back till after breakfast and is chastised upon her return by her assigned counsellor, a pillowy woman with severe hair. Still, they let her have the morning off to shower and sleep—an unusually lax response that Abigail doesn’t overthink till the afternoon.

Abigail is halfway down the stairs for group before she hears Will, talking animatedly for once, and to gauge the situation she was entering she stops to listen and watch through the railing.

Always intense, usually irritable Special Agent Graham was deep in conversation with her counsellor. Not talking about her, it seemed, thank god—but instead one of his articles about affection-as-violence. He is animated but his eyes don’t meet her counsellor’s; he focuses on a spot between his gesticulating hands. The doctor is rapt, and she looks him subtly up and down as he speaks, and Abigail remembers that Will is actually someone special outside her world.

She pulls back and watches him, handsome Will and all his messy love and strange dreamy brightness like starlight in lakes, with his broad shoulders and bad clothes and sweet sad face. 

(And a head in the freakish Atlantic)

Abigail tries to imagine knowing him normally, in private life. It must be quite something.

She bounds down the stairs before she is noticed. When he sees her he smiles; the expression breaks across his face quickly and completely. “Abigail!” he says, as she joins him at their usual table. “So nice to see you. I, uh, heard you didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”

Abigail sighs. “Yeah, breaking news, girl doesn’t like hospital.” She tilts her head and sneers. “How can you be here so fast, anyway? Don’t you have, like, a job?”

With Will you could always see the blows land, in the way is jaw worked and eyelids fluttered; his hurt blue-green eyes. She liked that about him. She liked how when vulnerable he always seemed to be on the verge of being utterly overwhelmed; he was barely holding on to a bare cliff while black storm waves crashed over and through him.

(Where it pours been-green over blue)

“Yes, I do,” he says. “Alana—Dr. Bloom—is taking over my lecture.”

“Sweet of her. She must really like you.”

“I think it would be more precise to say she cares about you,” he says. “We both do.”

The downside of Will of course was how he could make her feel like she had kicked a puppy. She ran her hands through her hair and tried to look chastened. “Thanks,” she says. “Thanks for coming. I appreciate it. Nothing’s wrong—guess I was just feeling restless.”

"I was thinking, maybe we could get out of here and go get some ice cream." 

Did he think she was seven years old. “Like a Daddy/daughter date?”

He pauses, pushes his glasses back up. “Something like that.”

“Sure,” she says, “I’d love that. I’ve been wanting to get to know you more, anyway.” And Abigail smiles, warm, and her happiness spills over to Will and he grins.

The ice cream salon is bright modern white and grey, under its layer of sticky sugar and children’s voices. They all looked like computer stores now, Will complains, and Abigail realises she liked the way distaste wrung itself out of him despite himself.

She saved a booth for them while he ordered. The seats were upholstered plastic and the table was cool and chrome. He came back with a small cup of yogurt and then the biggest thing on the menu—a banana split, piled and dripping with splashes of red and chocolate. She laughs when he pushes it over to her.

“For me?!”

“For you.”

“Thanks, Dad,” she says. The chatter around them seemed jarring in the sudden silence. “Oops. Bad joke,” she amended.

“Sometimes I dream I am,” he says, studying his food.

“What, the killing part? Weird.” 

“The nice part,” he lied, looking up at her with obvious effort. She could feel her face setting cold and still, and tried to relax as he met her eyes. She wondered what else he dreamed of. 

(In the waters off beautiful Nauset)

“You’re—you’re a really exceptional girl, Abigail,” he continues. “Anyone would be proud to call you a daughter. I know I’m not—I know we’re not related. At all. But I want to protect—I want to be there for you. For whatever you might need.”

“Like titanic piles of ice cream,” she says. 

“Oh. I can get you something else.” 

Abigail examines the man across from her, one of two who had for better or worse taken her parents and one of three who had taken her life from her. She took in his dark curls and crooked nose and sad blue eyes; his rough tense fingers around the bowl of ice cream and thin mobile mouth pulling down with the weight of words unsaid, and she felt a lurch of want.

She wants to take from him like he took from her. 

She wants to run her hands through his dark curls and feel the way his beautifully delineated lips parted against hers. She wanted to drink from black crashing waves. 

(I used to pray to recover you)

She wants to take everything from him too.

But she just smiles. “No, no—this is great, this is perfect. We don’t get this at the—anyway. Thanks.” She scoots it closer to him. “Help me eat it though. I can hardly see you over it!' 

And he laughs and takes off his glasses, and she laughed too as they shared the sundae.

After her father, she has had to experiment with affection. When Will drops her off at the hospital she takes his hand—broad and warm—and presses it to her cheek. “Thanks,” she says again. “This helped a lot.” 

He smiles, and strokes her hair, and she takes the chance to embrace him.

It was nice to fall forward into someone, by choice. He was warm and smelled of bad cologne and hot fudge and the outdoors, and he wrapped his arms tight around her.

Abigail could have been Will’s daughter. They had the same colouring and mobile features. She wonders what kind of father Will would have been. What being loved by him would have been. And she aches. 

All of her aches. 

She feels ill.

(Ach, du)

Upstairs, alone, Abigail barely makes it to the small bathroom all peeling pale blue and white before throwing up—her gut wrenching up curdled sugar and bile and cream, the dollops of fruit splashing horribly, until she was free of it all. 

Until she could hate him again.

Dinner at Will’s house a week later, in his cozy old house in the middle of nowhere, and Abigail can see he is slightly flush with fever. She encourages him to drink too much—which isn’t hard. It simply takes confronting him just enough to make him nervous, and she is rewarded by getting to see more and more of the gold liquid disappearing in jerks down his throat. It would be her way in.

(I never could talk to you)

She is on the old chair which smells of fireplace and dog and he is on the couch when she asks him.

“What do you want from me, anyway?”

He puts his drink down. He really was too lovely, his long lashes, his sad eyes—the way expressions danced like sheets of rain in wind, on lakes in night. “I don’t want anything from you,” he says, but his eyes flicked to her scar and she knew then he dreamed of his hands around her neck.

Abigail leans forward. “My dad wanted me to stay. To never leave and always be his little girl. He didn’t care what I needed.” She stood up and walked over to him, standing between his legs. “Do you just feel like you owe me?”

He shifts forward, resting his hands on her waist, digging his fingers in till he reached flesh. “Listen. I want you to be happy, is all I want. I want you to have what you need. I care—I care deeply for you, Abigail.”

She put his hands on his shoulders. He burned with heat and he seemed so strong. 

(The tongue stuck in my jaw)

You love me, she wanted to challenge. I’m not your daughter. You took everything you’re beautiful please protect me I was fine how dare you thank you for saving me please save me I want to hurt you. I am choking on all this love and fear. I am drowning in the dark and I cannot see.

(It stuck in a barb wire snare)

And the way Abigail Hobbs knew love was like dark water tides carrying sharks, and it was how she gave it.

(Ich, ich, ich, ich,  
I could hardly speak)

She takes his face in her hands, the fine bones and warm skin and rough scruff of beard. She kisses his forehead; moves her hands down to his neck to kiss his mouth, soft at first—he opens his mouth to curse against her lips and she deepened the kiss and he tasted bright and golden, and as she moved forward to straddle him he moaned, “no. No, no.” She had worn a skirt on purpose and there was only a slip of silk between her bare flesh and him.

Her hands are on Will’s throat as he swallows, the muscles in his neck tightening like a noose. Like a noose was tightening around his neck.

(The snows of Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna)

Abigail arches her back to press against him, roll her hips against his as she moves her hands up from his neck to run through his hair; she kisses him hard with lips chewed dry of all their gloss. She wonders if what they say about him is right, if her feelings, her lust and hate and love and longing could bleed into him and echo back. Certainly, even though he is tense with fear as she kisses him he shivers against her and clutches her close, bucking to meet her—he holds her so tight to him like he is afraid she will fly away.

“Please,” she whispers, she whimpers, into his ear, kissing his jaw, his neck, “please. For me.”

“No, no, oh no,” he almost sobs. “Please Abigail, honey, don’t, I can’t—this isn’t—“ he says, and his breath and beard are warm on her skin, and she hums happily as her little hands undo his belt and pants and she slips a hand down to feel him hard and hot against her. She rubs as he gasps, and he digs his fingers in. “I’ll hurt you,” he says.

Abigail laughs, and leans to push up and under his horrible grey wool sweater to peel him out of it. “Hmm. Maybe I’ll hurt you.”

(Are not very pure or true)

Abigail runs her hands up and down him, glorying in her power to touch him how she would like—over his hot taut skin over lean muscle, the strength of his hands that holds her wrists as she pulls her own sweater and bra off and presses her bare skin to him with a happy sigh. He moves a hand up the curve of her waist to cup her small breast. She writhes against him; he’s hard beneath her.

His hand on her thigh moves up under her skirt to her cunt—“here—let me—this should—“ and she cries out in surprise and pleasure as his dry nimble fingers slip between her slick lips to her clit—

“No,” she gasps, shivering, it felt so good, it felt too good—it would not do to come apart now.

“No?” He looks stricken, he looks relieved. 

“No, I mean here, come here, fuck me, Will, please,” she says, as he strokes her hair, and she reached down to pull him out of the thin cotton of his boxers. She lifted herself to kick off her panties as he pulled off his jeans. When she straddles him again she takes him in hand and he nudges at her entrance, stroking her hair and pressing his forehead to hers. When he pushes in it is with a soft cry as if being set free, and she can hardly breathe.

Oh it felt so good and so safe, his deep steady thrusts, and he wrapped his arm round to cradle her head and kiss her face and neck as he fucked her, and the words flowed from him but she couldn’t say anything, anything at all. All she could do was try to hold him closer and clench her eyes tight and tangle her own hands through his hair and take him inside. Her hands slip on his back gone cool and slick and salty with sweat, and it only felt like being split open a little bit but in such a good way. And she realises she loves to feel the arch of his back and the nocks of his spine as she takes him, and to have pure Will’s pure self in all its love and hunger.

(And my weird luck)

His grip in her hair grew tighter and his rhythm faster and she rolled to meet him, and there was so much she wished she could say, but nothing came out but gasps and hums, and she barely lets him pull out before he came in hot spurts on her stomach. It surprised her how warm it was like a spray of blood, and it broke her heart how tenderly he kissed her and cleaned her belly with his discarded shirt like tissue. She still shivered, and he apologized with a half-sob as he gathered her into his arms and held her. “My sweet girl, my girl, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

She bent to his ear. “Am I your girl,” was all she could think to say.

He didn’t answer.

“Say yes, please,” 

(I have always been scared of you)

“Yes,” he says, and cupped her face, rubbing his thumb at the corner of her mouth.

(And your neat moustache)

His rough cheek was salty as she kissed him goodbye at his door, car keys in hand. “Don’t you think it’s best,” she says, “when it’s just us?”

(And your Aryan eye, bright blue)

She was fine on the dark ride back but her knees shook as she walked up the stairs to her room. In bed she could smell Will’s musk on her skin, and she thought of Hannibal, and thought of them both and laughed into her pillow. 

Her two new fathers. Once she could take and one she could choose. 

Abigail didn’t remember any nightmares but still woke up exhausted and sore.

***

The tub was already half full of hot clear water when she decided to add bubble bath—one of the gifts from Freddy. The heat from the faucet roar almost hurts her hand as the water splashes when she poured in the blue soap.

It wasn’t too hard to convince the doctors she was too ill for group to get the afternoon off. It wasn’t a lie, either. Everywhere her skin had touched Will’s seemed to burn and she still felt his hands around her waist and the desperate crack in his voice. 

Abigail steps and sinks into the water slowly, listening to the thin skin of bubbles hiss and crack in her ears. Bubbles, she remembered, being one of those things she felt she should like more than she actually did. She dips her head back and fills her mouth with dark water; when she spits it out in a stream it makes a dent in the white soap dunes where it lands.

“Abigail?” a low metal voice calls from her room, scraping her ears, flooding her with cold panic even in the hot water.

(Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You—)

“Ah—yes? Hello?” she calls back, shooting up. 

The door was open and she saw a familiar person—a graceful curve to his broad suited back as he placed books on her bedside table. He studiously did not look into the bathroom. “It’s Hannibal,” he says—unnecessary but polite. “Forgive me, I called ahead. When you didn’t answer, I became concerned and came in.”

“Oh. I, uh, didn’t go to group today. They must have forgotten to tell me. You’re fine.”

He was turned so she couldn’t see his face. “I’ve brought you some gifts,” he says. “I was also hoping we might discuss some matters. But perhaps another time.”

“Now is fine,” she calls. “Come in. There’s bubbles, you can’t see anything. And you’re a doctor anyway.”

A pause, and then footsteps. Abigail sinks a little lower into the tub. He had talked to Will, she realises, and she feels the same anticipatory knot as when hunting a deer wandered into sight—or a girl with long dark hair. 

Hannibal leans against the wall opposite her, a small fixed smile on his face, his eyes never glancing from hers to anywhere impolite. He had an opacity to him that was heavily cultivated and fortified; her own, like the disappearing bubbles, was fitful and revealing.

(Not God but a swastika)

“Am I in trouble?” she says, the acoustics of the room making her voice sound too loud. “Is he in trouble?”

“It depends on what you were trying to accomplish.”

“So I’m not…uh, in time out?”

He takes a breath. “You’re not in time out. This was—not unanticipated.” He could have a sad and weary cast to his severe features sometimes, as if gnawed at too long by unknown appetites. She had never seen his teeth but imagined them sharp. “I am not entirely pleased with ether of you, but I think you will be punished enough by the consequences.”

“Consequences.”

“If you were trying to push Will away, I’m afraid you’ve done quite the opposite.”

Abigail sinks lower, raising her chin above the water. “I wasn’t trying to push him away,” she mutters.

“No?”

No, she wanted to say. Not totally. I was just tired of being cast as daughter to someone else’s sickness, cast as sustenance to and reflection of someone else’s fucking sickness and hunger and being told it was love. I couldn’t even cut my own hair, did you know that, my father wouldn’t let me—I wanted something someone for myself.

He dreams of me, you know, she wanted to say. I wonder what he dreams about you. Do you know what I dream of?

But when she tries to speak it was like pulling barbed wire up through her pink raw throat—with every word a tick and burr catching and choking white hot when she swallowed. 

She could only gasp, like the hot steam would help. The water shook and lapped at her breast.

Hannibal kneels by her almost immediately, with his quick grace that was always surprising. He extends his hand. She takes it briefly, squeezing it, digging in her nails before releasing him, hating both of them.

“Do you know what I learned from my dad?” she finally says. “I learned if I didn’t take initiative, I would be next. And that’s what I did—take initiative.”

He cocks his head and she marvelled that his carved mask of a mourner’s face could hold such tenderness. “And what would Will have done to you, do you think.” 

(So black no sky could squeak through)

She shrugs. Upon further study, his face was only almost tender—the too-generous curl of lip spoiled the illusion. There was only a thin film of bubble covering her in patches, and his hand rested just above the water. “Tried to legally adopt me, who knows. Taken me out for more ice cream. Like I was seven. Like I was actually his kid.”

“You are quite young, Abigail.”

“Yeah?” On impulse, she straightens, so her small high breasts were just above the water line, so suddenly that the water splashed his outstretched hand. The corner of his mouth twitches. “I’ve gotten myself through more than most. I don’t have your resources of charm or wealth or looks or—or experience, and yet here I am, alive.”

He inclines his head. “You do have a profound penchant for harming others, when you deem it necessary or desirable.”

She tilted her chin up. “Is that why you like me?”

“Would you like to see your gifts?” he says, as answer.

“Yeah, for sure. Thanks. Let out the water?” She nods to the drain.

Hannibal pauses a few seconds, completely still, before he spoke. “When you have been traumatised,” he says, “it is common to try and reenact the same pain, over and over.”

“Hmm,” she says. “You seem like you’d know a lot about that.”

Abigail loved his smile when he was surprised; unlike Will’s grin which broke like dawn, Hannibal’s unfurled slowly like night blooms and lit his dark eyes red.

He deftly unbuttons the cuff of his right hand and pushes his sleeve up. While Lecter might keep his direct gaze to his hands and her face, Abigail watches unabashedly. For a man of his stature he had unusually delicate wrists and a gentle curve to the pad of his thumb. She parted her legs to allow him better access. Some of his ash-blond hair falls forward as he leans in, dipping his hand into the water between her legs still buzzing with bubbles. He lets his thumb graze the inside of her thigh and she swore she saw a twitch of lip and bared teeth as she sucked in air through her nose at his touch, as the water swirled as her thigh jerked.

(Every woman adores a fascist)

Hannibal pulls back and stands as the water swirled and sucked down her body, down the drain. After he dries his hand, he holds the bath towel out and open. “Up you get.”

Abigail angles herself out of the tub, her exposed skin prickling against the cold.

“Arms out,” he says, and dries her—(a gentle and perfunctory sort of affection that made her very sad, suddenly, before the feeling passed)—before wrapping her gently, tucking the thick cotton corner in at her shoulder and smiling softly.

“Thanks,” she says, but he wasn’t done—he pats her hair dry with a second towel. Against the chill of the air, his hand on her shoulder was hot as her blinked-back tears as he placed the towel in her hands. 

“Now,” he says, stroking the stray damp strands of her hair into place. “Come see your gifts.”

She follows him into the bedroom but as soon as she reaches the side of her narrow blue bed her stomach seemed to drop out.

“Dr. Lecter—Hannibal?” she asks.

He had sat on the side of the bed, fanning the books out on the blanket. “Yes?”

“Why did I—“ Abigail swallows. She puts the towel in her hands on the desk. “Did I hurt him?”

“Will is mine and his own responsibility, not yours. And no. He is worried he has hurt you.”

“He hasn’t.”

“I know.”

“I thought I’d feel different,” she says, wry, a sneer creeping up. “I thought I’d feel better. But I don’t. I still—I still feel like a planet, that’s lost its sun. Or something. Like—like I just broke away from a black hole and I’m reeling.”

Hannibal’s lips part a few seconds before he speaks. “Love is reciprocal. It is a bond; a tie. You have been unmoored, and a part of you is seeking an anchor even as you seek freedom.”

“I just feel like I’m still choking on my own blood after all.” She shivers, and it surges through her whole body.

His face goes soft. He gathers the books and put them on the table, before moving back to sit on the bed and rest against the headboard. “Come here,” he says, extending his hand. Like the first time, in his office. “Come here to me.”

(The boot in the face, the brute  
Brute heart of a brute like you)

Abigail clutches at her towel. “Won’t I ruin your suit?”

“Don’t worry about that.”

What coursed through her might not have been relief, but it was just as sweet. She crawls onto the bed next to him, trying not to upset her covering more than necessary.

(A cleft in your chin instead of your foot,  
But no less a devil for that, no not)

It was funny, Abigail thinks, as she lay back against him—her back to his chest—this was a position she knew all too well with men who claimed to love her. She thinks of her father gasping on the ground. Will gasping on the couch. She lays her head in the crook of Hannibal’s shoulder—with him, though, it was as simple as relaxing, falling into orbit, tumbling ever downward and never landing. He was stronger than either of the others, lean and hard and warm even through his suit, the spice of what he was wearing subtle and heady. So different and sweet to be held in his implacable arms, by the strange black statue of a man with his red lips and too-fine tastes.

(Any less than the black man who)

Hannibal didn’t move, didn’t say anything until he felt her relax against him. His left arm still holding her, he showed her her gifts—more poetry. Dickinson and Atwood and Plath; words she could taste and savour and chew like raw flesh. Sustenance in this bare place with dying plants in stone pots and old mirrors and sunlight through panes like bars.

She feels the new books reverently, placing her hand on each cover as if they provided nourishment.

“Freddie brought me some things too,” she says, delighting as he tensed at the mention of her name. She leans forward and when the towel came undone she didn’t bother to replace it until she got the blood-coloured notebook out of the other bedside table. “She got me this journal. I’m supposed to write my own story, even while she writes one for me. Funny, huh.”

“A very thoughtful gift,” he says. “Very beautiful, too.” She liked how she could feel his low voice vibrating against her back. “She sees herself in you, I think. Has it been helpful?”

She opens it for him, showing the empty cream pages behind the scars of the ripped out ones. He runs his fingers along the scar. “I can’t write,” she says. “I tear everything out. I try to write about myself but I don’t know what’s true. I’ve spent my entire life trying to survive someone else’s hold on me I have no idea—I can’t think. I don’t know.” Abigail closes the journal as a sob catches her breath, and he holds her until she gathered herself.

“Did Will tell you, like, everything?” she asks.

“I think so.”

She sensed a shift in how he held her, and the most wicked part of her wondered how badly he wanted to hear her side of it—how maybe he was jealous, that she had had Will Graham trembling and begging beneath her, between her legs. The thought made her brave, made her arch against him and hum, to his tightened grip and quicker breathing.

They understood one another.

(Bit my pretty red heart in two)

She continues. “He told you that I didn’t let him—um, reciprocate?

“Yes.”

She sighs, before leaning over and rustling in cabinet, pulling out a slim black vibrator. His nostrils flared. 

“Freddie bought me this too,” she says, turning it over in her hands. “Said every girl should have one. Another way of, ah, knowing yourself.” She cocked her head to look at him, he turned so she could have kissed his lips if she wanted. “All of you guys very into knowing yourselves, I’ve noticed.”

He laughs, and she has to look away to hide how pleased she was.

“The perils of our professions,” he says. “Has it worked?”

“No. I mean, yes. It works. I just end up thinking of really weird stuff.”

(And then I knew what to do)

“Disturbing images.” His left hand was playing lightly with her hair, stroking and twisting it against her collarbone. Her skin tingled up through her scar, which throbbed. She remembered him kneeling, his hands at her throat.

(I made a model of you)

“You should do it, you know,” she says, in her audacity sounding distant even to herself. “Help reprogram me. Like you helped me with my bad dreams.”

“Is that what you want?”

“It’s one of the things I want.”

He was silent for a long while, and Abigail blushes hotly. When he takes a deep breath, she rises and falls with it.

(A man in black with a Meinkampf look)

“Very well,” he says, and he held out her hand and she turned over the toy.

(And a love of the rack and the screw)

He positioned her between his legs and had her lean back against him, naked and pale against his suit. He cradles his arm around her bracing his hand on her slim damp shoulder, and when kisses her neck before he begins she can hear him inhale through the nose, and she is grateful for that. “You tell me if you wish to stop.”

“Of course.”

A little lube, also a gift from Freddie—cold—and the lowest setting at first, soft, between her labia, ghosting around her clit. While Will was an echo chamber Hannibal only responds to her own feedback, matching his movement to what pleased her the most but never letting his own hungers show.

(If I’ve killed one man I’ve killed two)

“Open yourself for me,” he murmurs in her ear, and she exhales sharply. She slips her hand down to part her labia, and he gently applies more lubricant. His fingers were deft and coarse, and she makes a small sound in spite of herself. He turned the vibrator’s settings higher as he whispered, to focus on herself, focus on her body, focus on listening to only herself but she could feel the steel of his watch and the strength of his grip, and sometimes as he manipulated the toy his hand brushed hers. 

(The vampire who said he was you)

“Do you like it inside?” he murmurs, and she nods assent and moans softly as he nudged it inside her, gently, in and out, varying it inside and rubbing it up and down as she reached round to curl her fingers in his hair.

(And drank my blood for a year)

He didn’t move his left hand beyond gently stroking her skin, as if reading it. She takes his hand up to her small breast, to her heart, to her lips, where she kissed and sucked on his fingers. Smoother and cooler than Will’s; still rough and large and salty. He turns his head to press his lips and nose into her hair as she did so.

(Daddy you can lie back now.)

And here she was again in the merciless arms of a different kind of monster and he was dead, wasn’t he, her dad, and she was losing control now as pleasure began swelling and rippling and she could’t help but twitch and buck, and gasp, and when she arched against him her wet naked skin felt delicious against the soft fine fabric and his broad firm body.

(There’s a stake in your fat black heart)

And she would always find herself again in this place recreated, leaning against a man who loved her about to tear her apart, and she loved him she hated him she loved him—

(And the villagers never liked you)

Nobody had seen it was her dad but her even though now no one seemed surprised. Nobody seemed to see Hannibal but her and no one saw her but Hannibal and he loved her for it she loved him for it.

(They always knew it was you)

And the gravity of him and how it was so easy to fall into his arms and his influence like a place had been made special for her there.

Hannibal was speaking, she realized, telling her what a special girl she was, how precious. 

Hannibal’s clipped rasp of a voice, smoke and knives, on the phone—in his study. In her ear.

On the phone.

All that blood oh ALL that blood, and how bright hunting knives shone in sun, and how pitching on the edge of orgasm felt almost exactly like waiting for the glinting blade to sink in—

And she sees herself in the mirror, replaced correctly by the bed, all pink and open in his stern grasp, under his ministrations, with a toy instead of a knife and by her own doing—

It was torture, torture, her muscles all melted her stomach twisting—she grabs his left hand gripped tight on her shoulder and moves it up to her neck to cover her scar.

“Breathe,” he reminds her softly, “breathe, you’re fine, I have you, you’re almost there,”

It will all be over soon, her dad had said

She was— “Oh, Daddy,” she says, as she comes, and her mind went blissful and black. 

Oh, fuck.

She leans up to kiss the high plane of his cheek, and his skin prickles against her lips. “Thank you, Daddy,” she says, to make it clear she was talking to him.

“It’s all right,” he says, and there was a twist to his thick lips and a low huskiness to his voice. “I do like to think of you as mine.”

“So does Will.”

She feels him smile against her temple. “I won’t tell him if you won’t.”

(Daddy, Daddy)

And that night, for the first time, she can write. 

She could find a way out. She could escape from all of them; she could destroy them all.

(You bastard, I’m through)

**Author's Note:**

> trying to get back in the swing of writing after a tumultuous period in life
> 
> this is going to get pornier as it goes i'm afraid
> 
> (come say hi to me on tumblr i am lipstickmata)


End file.
